Disappointment mounts for Research In Motion

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Research In Motion Ltd. shares fell to a 52-week-low Friday as investors showed their displeasure with the BlackBerry smartphone maker’s latest quarterly results and forecast.

RIM
RIMM
(RIM) gave up $1.69, or more than 11%, to close at $13.44, after earlier falling to as low as $13.12 in the wake of the company’s third-quarter results. Late Thursday, RIM said it earned $265 million, or 51 cents a share, on revenue of $5.17 billion. During the same period a year ago, RIM earned $911 million, or $1.74 a share, on $5.5 billion in sales.

Excluding one-time items, RIM would have earned $667 million, or $1.27 a share, in the three months ended Nov. 26. The results were in line with a pre-announcement from Dec. 2.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast that RIM would earn $1.19 a share on revenue of $5.27 billion, on average, for the latest quarter.

The company shipped 14.1 million smartphones during the quarter, in which it also launched new smartphones using the refreshed BlackBerry 7 operating system, including the BlackBerry Bold 9900. RIM said it ended the quarter with nearly 75 million BlackBerry subscribers globally.

For the fourth quarter ending in February, RIM said it expects earnings to come in the range of 80 to 90 cents a share on revenue between $4.6 billion and $4.9 billion. Analysts had earlier forecast RIM to earn $1.18 a share on $5.12 billion in revenue.

RIM said it expects to ship 11 million to 12 million smartphones during the current quarter, while analysts had forecast shipments of 13.1 million smartphone units.

RIM also said it wouldn’t release its first smartphone running on the BlackBerry 10 operating system until late in 2012, after previously saying the phones would come out in the early part of the year.

Analysts were quick to slam RIM following its report and forecast. Tim Long of BMO Capital Markets cut his rating on RIM to market perform, or neutral, from outperform, and lowered his target price on RIM’s shares to $15 from $26.

In a research note, Long said, “While we clearly waited too long to downgrade, we are more concerned that management’s new strategic moves will likely destroy even more value.”

Long went on to say that delaying the release of BlackBerry 10 smartphones, which will run on a new fourth-generation wireless network, “makes no sense to us as we estimate that 80% of RIM’s devices are sold outside the U.S., where there is no 4G [infrastructure].”

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use. Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. All quotes are in local exchange time. Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported through Nasdaq only. Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements.